On Tuesday, Oct. 16, the board of supervisors voted to hold the forum during its regular meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 4 at the government center.

Several advocates asked the board to consider holding the forum during the evening and in a more comfortable location, such as a church or community center, to better accommodate people who work and go to school during the day.

“Knowing that the local police and federal ICE agents are entangled and working together, that’s something that’s very concerning to families, communities of color,” said Silvia Murillo, member of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, one of the groups that requested the forum. “I think they would like to be part of that forum to learn what’s happening in their cities.”

The board, however, did not hear from the advocates until after they approved the meeting. The advocates, who arrived as a group, turned in speaker request slips after the vote had been taken and used slips that were designed for another topic.

Still, the county isn’t expected to reschedule the forum because there doesn’t appear to be a way to do that and still meet the deadline and terms of the letter sent by the ACLU and other groups, according to county spokesman David Wert.

The forum is a requirement of the Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds, or TRUTH, Act, which calls for counties to hold public forums explaining how deputies or police from those areas worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The state also requires that any records about how a county gave ICE access to inmates be treated as public documents.

In September, the ACLU and other groups sent separate letters to the boards of supervisors in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties requesting that each county hold a public forum in which sheriff officials could explain how and why their departments gave ICE access to inmates in county jails in 2017.

The letter did not specify the time or location of the meeting — only that the board of supervisors schedule it during their Oct. 2 meeting and give the public at least 30 days notice.

It was too late to add the item to the Oct. 2 agenda, Wert said, so the board took up the issue on Tuesday.

The letter also requested the meeting be live streamed to the county’s website, which Wert said can only be done from the board chambers at the government center.

“To the county, having the forum in conjunction with a regular board meeting made sense and offered the best opportunity for participation,” Wert said.

“People know board meetings happen at 10 a.m. basically every other Tuesday. No one expects to see a county meeting at night or in a location other than the Government Center.”